WordCamp Israel October 25 with Lorelle

WordCamp Israel is October 25, 2007, in Tel Aviv, and I am the keynote speaker! I will be doing two sessions, one covering Blogging Tips and the other on WordPress Tips. Space is limited and registration is filling up fast, so get signed up for this free day long conference now!

Currently, the schedule for WordCamp Israel includes my talk on the blog conversation and networking with blogging tips and techniques, a panel discussion on blogging as a marketing tool, building a WordPress blog, installing WordPress and using WordPress Plugins, the law regarding blogging, censorship, libel and copyrights, design and customization of WordPress Themes, and WordPress Tips.

That’s a lot of blogging and WordPress packed into a single day.

Among the different speakers and attendees is the popular Israeli blogger, Hannit of Achi Dakar, a long time fan of WordPress and another blog evangelist who contributes much to the Israeli and English documentation and support, helping Hebrew speakers learn more about how to use and integrate WordPress into their businesses and lives. You can read more about Hannit on the English and Hebrew sites in an interview.

When I moved to Israel in 1999, I quickly discovered that the country is a unique combination of third world and modern society all intermixed and integrated. You can buy scarves in a thousand year old shop in the Old City of Jerusalem filled with trinkets and candies by sliding your credit card through a hand-held wireless credit card scanner and receipt generating machine, not much larger than a paperback book. The average Israeli owns three cell phones, often in use at the same time, long before cell phones were as popular or necessary in the United States.

Israel is also the birthplace for much of the technological discoveries and advancements that created computers, the Internet, and communications including the Pentium chip, Motorola portable phones, and so much more, including the tools that WordPress is so dependent upon: PHP and MySQL.

What is most exciting to me about being a part of the first WordPress and blogging conference in Israel is the fact that Israelis are some of the most opinionated folks I’ve ever met in my travels. They love debate. They love arguing a point just for the sake of beating the point from every perspective.

In many respects, Israel represents more of the world than the world represents itself, as the tiny country hosts nationalities from almost every country and region in the world, all brought together under one flag that allows them to live in peace with their next door neighbors, though not always their neighboring countries. With this unique melting post of internationalism, they are very opinionated about politics in their own tiny corner of the world and around the globe as they understand better than most that the world is watching them, and how Israel plays an important role on the global stage.

They are creative people, with some of the most brilliant thinkers, developers, designers, and actors in the world. They are also a highly social community, making blogging a natural part of their social networking and lifestyle.

I look forward to working with this new generation of communicators who understand the power in free speech and social networking, who are just getting a glimmer of the power blogging can be.

Very much looking forward to meeting you and hearing you speak on the 25th and I think registration has already filled up, at least that’s what it says on the English WordCamp Blog page. Waiting list only.

As another WP.com blogger, I’m only sorry that there won’t be enough time to touch on topics relating to blogging here at WP.com. Maybe next year. 🙂

Jennifer: Sold out! Already! Really? Wow! And I look forward to meeting you and everyone there. And what do you mean no time to talk about WordPress.com. Sure there will be time. I’ll make sure and make some, just be ready with the questions in the afternoon session.

I found your comments on Israel rather cliched and frankly propagandistic. High-profile people associated with WordPress have taken a number of courageous decisions, such as refusing to bow to the Chinese government on freedom of speech and the refusal to concede to the ludicrous ban in Turkey. Whether you like it or not, you are clearly a high-profile person associated with WordPress (I came to this link via planet.wordpress.org). WordPress’ greatest gift is its open-source structure, making it accessible to all with the means (ie access to the net etc). But that’s the great nub in a place like Israel–whether it is amongst Sephardic Israelis or non-Jewish Israelis (disproportionately poor and unemployed) or amongst those “living” under Israeli military occupation (ie the Palestinians). So when you sprout wonderful about Israeli society, uncritically endorsing its present status, you take away an element of WordPress’ “neutrality”, if you will. I’m not for a moment trying to criticise you for expressing your opinion of Israel or on any matter related to Israel (which I’m sure we would disagree on). But it seems in this context you are being a “face” for WordPress and I wonder why you feel it necessary to include such promotion of Israel. I wonder, will you be speaking at Wordcamp Palestine? Will there even be one?…I guess that is part of my point.

Will you be taking this same stance on WordCamp Hamburg, WordCamp Beijing (which happened not long ago), and WordCamp Melbourne? What about WordCamp Dallas? There are some nasty things people could say about any place in the world. I am me, and one of the millions of faces of WordPress. I will support it anywhere me everywhere I can. If there were a WordCamp Palestine, my friends there would invite me, I’m sure. And I will celebrate all of those WordCamps equally.

[…] If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Lorelle has kindly written an article for the Israeli blogging community full of blogging tips, and explaining her connection to Israel (I was very curious about that!). Read on….it’s the usual Lorelle masterpiece. Also, see her post on her blog about WordCamp Israel: “WordCamp Israel October 25 with Lorelle.” […]

[…] some our favorite Israeli bloggers in honor of WordCamp Israel, October 25, 2007, in Tel Aviv. be I will attending and meeting many bloggers from around the county, and I wanted to share with you some of those who […]

[…] Out: WordCamp Israel is filled with a long waiting list for the October 25 day long conference. I’m going to be there, talking about blogging and WordPress, along with some of the best of the best of Israeli […]